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THE 

I MESSAGE and MISSION 
of QUAKERISM 



By WILLIAM C. BRAITHWAITE and 
HENRY T. HODGKIN, M.A., M.B. 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT: 



THE 

MESSAGE AND MISSION 
OF QUAKERISM 

By 
WILLIAM C. BRAITHWAITE 

and 
HENRY T. HODGKIN, M.A., M.B. 



PUBLISHED BY DIRECTION OF THE 
FIVE YEARS MEETING 



PHILADELPHIA 

The John C. Winston Company 
1912 






Copyright, 1912, by 
The John C. Winston Co. 



©CLA330575 
*4t 



FOREWORD 

The two addresses which compose this 
book were delivered at the Five Years 
Meeting of the Society of Friends held in 
Indianapolis, Indiana, from October 15th 
to 22nd, 1912. They were listened to with 
profound interest and appreciation, and 
were approved by a Minute which also 
ordered their publication, in order that the 
wider group of Friends, and all others who 
are interested in the message and mission of 
a religion of this type, might have the op- 
portunity to read them. It is a plain duty 
of any religious body to put its truths into 
circulation, and to reinterpret again and 
again the vital principles by which its 
members live and work. Here in this little 
book will be found in convenient form a 
fresh and illuminating expression of the 
truths, principles and ideals of present-day 
Quakerism and some of the practical prob- 
lems confronting the modern 'world which 
the application of these truths, principles 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

and ideals might solve. The reader will 
discover that the writers live in the 
Twentieth Century and that they are 
"speaking to the condition" of the age. 

Rufus M. Jones. 

Haverford, Pennsylvania 
12th mo. 9th, 1912 



4 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF 
CONTENTS 

PART I 

THE ESSENTIALS OF QUAKERISM 
BY WILLIAM C. BRAITHWAITE 

PAGE 

Introductory - - - - - - -11 

The early Quaker movement - 13 

Its two great characteristics, — intense sincerity 
and the experience of the living presence 
of Christ -------- 14 

"Seekers" were especially receptive to the mes- 14 
sage of George Fox ----- 

Edward Burroughs description of experience 16 
The heightened personality that came to the 

"Children of the Light" - - - - 20 

Quakerism a religion of the prophetic and 
apostolic type, in contrast with the priestly 
and institutional type - - - - - 21 

The Church should be a living fellowship of 
disciples at work for the Kingdom of God, 
plus Jesus Christ Himself, in whose Spirit 
they become together "one flock, one 
Shepherd" 23 

5 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

PAGE 

The vital nature of such a fellowship - - 24 
Our position not negative but positive - -25 
Quakerism a "religion of life" - 25 

The supreme question for the Church, How can 

we foster life? 26 

Cheap substitutes for life ----- 29 

A religion of life must devote itself to vital pro- 
cesses and vital relations; chiefly, 
Loyal discipleship ----- 30 

Inspired leadership - - - - - 31 

Warm fellowship ----- 33 

Loving service ------ 35 

Steady spiritual growth - 36 

Methods and machinery, organization and 
Church discipline have only a subordinate 
value to these prime factors of health - 37 
The life must be allowed free expression; the 

form must be kept plastic - 38 

The physiologist tells us that living matter is 
always soft and jelly-like, permitting of the 
free play of molecular interchanges - - 38 
Fit the clothes to the man, not the man to the 

clothes 40 

Expansion that comes where the Spirit of God 
has been allowed freely to work upon groups 
of disciples without being limited by organ- 
ization and tradition, e. g. Foreign Mis- 
sionary Work, Adult School movement, 
Quakerism in Western States - 40 

6 



Analytical Table of Contents 

PAGE 

Church-arrangements, important in themselves, 
should be regarded as machinery through 
which the life can work, — the life of the 
individual which we call personal respon- 
sibility, of the group, which we call fellow- 
ship, and above all the Divine vitality, 
which we call spiritual power and spiritual 
guidance ------ --41 

Above conclusion illustrated from the way in 
which these vital forces come into play in 
the various forms of Friends' meetings - 42 
The evangelistic service and its needs - - 43 
The meeting for worship, its great value and its 

needs ---44 

The teaching meeting and its needs - 46 

Quakerism, at its best, always the product of vital 

forces and the producer of vital relations 47 
Its dependence upon the earnest seeking spirit - 48 
Craving to-day for reality in religion and life - 49 
Atmosphere of large - hearted charity and 

brotherly confidence needed - 50 

Quakerism,essentially,a religion of sincerity, an- 
swered by the incoming of the living Christ 51 
Hopes confronting us to-day, — the craving after 
truth, the meaning and worth of personality, 
woman's place in the world, the reign of 
law in international affairs, the regenera- 
tion of social conditions, the hope of Christ 
for the whole world ----- 52 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

PAGE 

The Quaker Church called to be in the van- 
guard of progress with respect to all these - 53 

Duty of personal witness for truth, based on a 

living experience of it - - - - - 53 

Conclusion --------54 

PART II 

THE CONTRIBUTION OF FRIENDS TO THE 

LIFE AND WORK OF THE CHURCH 

BY HENRY T. HODGKIN, M.A., M.B. 

Personal experience of co-operation with other 
denominations in west China and elsewhere 

An ideal of Chri^itan unity ----- 57 

The Society of Friends in relation thereto - 58 

That which the Society holds in common with 

others --------62 

The attitude in which the contribution can be 

made- --------63 

Summary of some contributions Friends have 
already made. 

Need of first-hand experience — Religious 
toleration — Brotherhood of all races — High 
business standard — Practical philanthropy 66 

Contribution of Friends to modern life. 

Direct personal intercourse with God — 
Modern drift to materialism — The greater 
danger in the child races — Proposed 
remedies — The positive message of Friends 69 

8 



Analytical Table of Contents 

PAGE 

The quiet heart. 

The rush of modern life — The sense of need 
felt at home and abroad — Worship as a 
united inspired act — A high ideal to be 
reached --------76 

The leadership of the Spirit. 

From autocracy to democracy — The nation- 
alist spirit in the East — The Quaker meet- 
ing for discipline — A theocratic ideal - 83 

Idealism. 

The danger of opportunism — Solution of the 
race problem — Place of the idealist - - 89 

Woman's contribution. 

The Woman's Movement to-day — The 
emancipation of women in the East — The 
failure of the Church to respond — The ex- 
perience of Friends ----- 95 

A non-professional ministry. 

The labor movement an aspiration — Diffi- 
culty of the organized Churches — Danger 
abroad — Freedom of the ministry - - 99 

The spirit of tolerance. 

Modern scholarship and the Bible — Sug- \ 
gested solutions of the difficulty — A grave 
peril — Where Friends can help - - 104 

How the message is to be delivered. 

A fresh conviction — A fuller consecration — 
Large sympathy with others — A corporate 
sense of mission — Apostles - 109 

9 



PART I 

THE ESSENTIALS OF QUAKERISM 

by william c. braithwaite 

Introductory Words 

It is with great diffidence that we from 
England venture to speak to the American 
Yearly Meetings. Our circumstances and 
the problems we have to face are often so 
different that it would be presumptuous 
in us to feel that we had advice on matters 
of detail that would deserve very great 
attention from you. But when it comes 
to our common history and to the common 
inheritance we have in the principles and 
faith of the Society of Friends, we may 
speak freely. 

We represent the main body of those 
who call themselves " Friends." The Yearly 
Meetings from which we come connect 
by continuous history with the first Quaker 
Churches of two hundred and fifty years 

11 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

ago. Of course when we compare ourselves 
as we are now, with the first Friends, we find 
great differences, as great undoubtedly 
as exist between the New Englander of 
to-day and the Pilgrim Fathers. We 
should find much to astonish if we could 
peep in at one of those first London meetings 
held in the summer of the year 1655 at the 
Bull and Mouth, the great "tavern-chapel" 
in Aldersgate, in which you could then 
crowd a thousand people standing. I 
fancy these meetings may have been 
rather like some of your pioneer meetings 
in the West. But the pioneers of the 
London work, Howgill and Burrough, would 
find modern Quakerism, whether in England 
or in the Middle West, a strange thing. 
It takes a wise man to recognize his 
own great-great-great-great grandchildren. 
They have an inheritance that connects 
them up with their ancestor, but their 
environment is so different that on the 
surface they seem to have been changed 
into another type of man. At bottom, 
however, we shall find that the inherited 
type will continue. 

12 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

"For never Pilgrims' offshoot scapes control 
Of those old instincts that have shaped his soul." 
(Lowell, "Fite Adam's Story.") 

In other words, the inner life of a religious 
movement remains, although the expres- 
sion of that life will greatly vary under 
changing conditions of time and place. 

I. 

In order to get at the essentials of Quaker- 
ism, we do well to go back to the beginnings, 
to those first years of nascent energy which 
carried the Quaker message through the 
English-speaking world. Whenever a new 
truth starts to life, it is intensely dynamic 
and vital; it masters every opposing 
circumstance; it flings itself victoriously 
against a stubborn world. It is a thing 
of life and movement, and I believe it will 
be found that a live truth in motion is the 
mightiest of all forces. But, a generation 
later, unless the vital forces have been 
cherished, the emphasis comes to be laid 
on establishment rather than movement, 
and when a thing gets established it usually 
ceases to move; the emphasis comes to 

13 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

be laid on dogma instead of truth, on 
organization instead of life, and the day of 
glory and power passes away. That was 
the case with Quakerism. 

Two things, I believe, leave a vivid 
impression upon any student of the early 
Quaker movement. They can be stated 
quite simply, but they make up together 
the fundamentals of Quakerism to which 
everything else belongs as a natural con- 
sequence. 

In the first place we find ourselves 
among men and women of an intense sin- 
cerity, who are seeking truth with all the 
energy of their faith, all the energy of their 
nature, and, in the second place, we become 
aware that this earnest search after the 
Kingdom of God and its righteousness was 
rewarded with a great finding, a rich 
personal experience in their lives, of the 
living presence of Jesus Christ, their Savior. 

We know now that communities who 
called themselves " Seekers' ' were specially 
receptive of the Quaker message, and 
became the main strength of the new move- 
ment. In that Puritan age, filled with 

14 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

religious zeal, there were many honest- 
hearted men craving after something more 
real than the mere outward profession of 
religion. They were not satisfied with the 
triumphant religion of the time, which 
put strong emphasis, and rightly put strong 
emphasis, on belief in the great historical 
facts of Christianity, but had little or no 
conception of Christ's living presence in 
the world to-day. And when Fox told 
these honest-hearted Seekers that he knew 
in his own experience that Jesus Christ 
was come to teach His people Himself, 
their souls leapt up to welcome the Divine 
Guest. Fox himself was a man of intense 
sincerity, who found actually in his own 
spirit the place where the seed of Divine 
life was springing up, the place where the 
voice of a Divine teacher was being uttered, 
the place that was being inhabited by a 
Divine and glorious presence. He could 
tell the great company of Seekers who met 
at Firbank Fell in Westmorland on that 
memorable afternoon in June, 1652, not 
only of an historical Christ, but of a living 
Savior, their Teacher to instruct them, 

15 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

their Governor to direct them, their Shep- 
herd to feed them, their Bishop to oversee 
them, their Prophet to open Divine mys- 
teries to them. I am giving you the points 
of his three-hour sermon on that occasion. 
Their bodies, he said, were intended to 
be temples for Jesus Christ to dwell in. 
They were to be brought off from the 
temples, tithes, priests and rudiments of 
the world. They were to come to the 
Spirit of God in themselves and to Christ 
the Substance. 

The new message opened out a new way 
of life to men who were sincere enough 
to go through with it and to live it out. 
It carried with it a radical transformation 
or rather transfiguration of life from the 
earthly into the Heavenly. I will give a 
passage in the quaint English of the time in 
which Edward Burrough, himself one of 
these Westmorland Seekers, describes the 
experience: 

"In all things we found the Light which 
we were enlightened withal, and all man- 
kind (which is Christ), to be alone and only 
sufficient to bring to Life and eternal 

16 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

salvation. And so we ceased from the 
teachings of all men, and their words, 
and their worships and their temples, and 
all their baptisms and churches, and we 
met together often, and waited upon the 
Lord in pure silence, from our own words 
and all men's words, and hearkened to the 
voice of the Lord, and felt His word in our 
hearts to burn up and beat down all that 
was contrary to God, and we obeyed the 
Light of Christ in us, and took up the cross 
to all earthly glories, crowns and ways, 
and denied ourselves, our relations and all 
that stood in the way betwixt us and the 
Lord, and, while waiting upon the Lord 
in silence, as often we did for many hours 
together, we received often the pouring 
down of the Spirit upon us, and our hearts 
were made glad and our tongues loosed 
and our mouths opened, and we spake with 
new tongues, as the Lord gave us utterance, 
and as His Spirit led us, which was poured 
down upon us, on sons and daughters, 
and the glory of the Father was revealed. 
And then began we to sing praises to the 
Lord God Almighty and to the Lamb 

». 17 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

forever, who had redeemed us to God, 
and brought us out of the captivity and 
bondage of the world, and put an end to sin 
and death, — and all this was by and through 
and in the Light of Christ within us."* 

Now, it is not my purpose to examine 
this experience from the side either of 
psychology or dogmatic theology. There 
are psychologists and theologians, too, 
with whom I could not venture to com- 
pare myself, but it is enough to take 
the great experience simply as historical 
fact. There can be no question that two 
hundred and fifty years ago actual living 
intercourse with the Divine, such as Bur- 
rough describes, gathered the first Friends 
into their wonderful fellowship. It lifted 
them into an order of life which set them 
in a place of vision and power and joy. 
They saw the things of time in the light 
of eternity. They knew what it was to 
overcome the world, so that nothing could 
daunt their faith. In the words of one of 
the finest of the first Friends, William Dews- 
bury, the very prisons became palaces 

*Burrough, Preface to "Great Mystery." 

18 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

to them and the bolts and locks jewels. 
The Kingdom of Heaven was theirs, not 
indeed bringing the prizes of worldly ambi- 
tion, but filling life with something richer, 
righteousness and peace and joy in the 
Holy Ghost. And all this was the reward 
and the result of a single-hearted sincerity, — 
full righteousness of heart, full humility 
of soul, full searching after truth, full 
opening of the heart to the incoming of 
the Divine life. It had been won, as men 
count, at a great price. It had meant a 
breach with the current fashions of life and 
forms of religion; it had meant a daring fol- 
lowing of fresh truth through all its untried 
consequences; it had meant suffering and 
loss; it had meant the daily crossing of the 
carnal mind. It had meant all these things, 
yes, but it had meant also the incoming 
of the Life of Christ, bringing men into a 
new fellowship with one another and with 
God. 

We have to admit that in the first tide 
of this wonderful experience there were 
some serious extravagances of thought and 
conduct. It would be strange, I suppose, 

19 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

if newly opened eyes did not sometimes 
see men as trees walking. You get these 
extravagances when a fresh faculty of the 
soul is awaking to its powers. But the 
main phenomenon of Quakerism is the 
heightened personality which undoubtedly 
came to the Children of the Light. They 
were men and women to "shake their coun- 
try in their profession for ten miles round/ ' 
as some of our Friends have done in the 
Western states. Their very look carried 
with it the sentence of honor or shame. 
Their words had a challenging power, 
challenging men's consciences, forcing them 
to face the issues of good and evil, shatter- 
ing self-complacency and self-righteousness. 
The Quaker was an impregnable man, 
his principles were held with an extra- 
ordinary tenacity. He stood not on a 
sandy foundation of notions, but on a 
rock of experience, and thus founded the 
man was sure and steadfast. The message 
of a present living Christ within the heart 
and a present Kingdom of God awaiting 
those who would receive it burned in the 
heart of these first Friends. It burned 

20 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

in their hearts as a gospel for all men. 
It is a great mistake to suppose that the 
Quaker Church was founded as a sect. 
It had nothing sectarian about it. It had 
a great message of vital spiritual experience 
to give to the whole world. These first 
Friends were evangelists of vital Chris- 
tianity. 

They began as our evangelists to-day 
begin, by warning men to repent. George 
Fox went up Wensleydale calling on men 
to repent, for the day of the Lord was at 
hand, and proclaiming the Kingdom of 
Christ at the door of men's hearts, for them 
to take or reject. That is the spirit of 
this early Quakerism, and it surely takes 
us back to the spirit of the prophets and of 
primitive Christianity. 

II. 

The centering of life on the realities of 
inward intercourse with God is the great 
mark of the prophetic and apostolic type 
of religion and is in sharp contrast with 
religion of the priestly or institutional 
type. The prophet was a man who knew 



v»u 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

what it was to have converse with Jehovah 
and sure knowledge of His will. He became 
a Seer, a man of insight and foresight, 
aware of the true values of things, the true 
values as weighed in the balance of the 
sanctuary. He became thereby a great 
social and moral reformer. His ideal was 
of a time when all would be prophets — 
when "your sons and your daughters shall 
prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, 
your young men shall see visions." And 
we may remember that this ideal is recog- 
nized on the day of Pentecost as the natural 
first-fruits of the Spirit. If it had been 
realized the Church would have been a 
school of prophets from generation to gen- 
eration. Unfortunately the Church has 
more often stifled the seer and glorified the 
priest. 

As I understand it, it is the specific 
mission of Quakerism to propagate a Chris- 
tianity of this prophetic, apostolic type, a 
Christianity in which the Church is a living 
fellowship of disciples at work for the social 
and moral ends of the Kingdom of God. 
But the Church is not simply, in the 

22 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

Quaker conception, a fellowship of disciples 
at work for the Kingdom of God; it is 
such a fellowship plus Jesus Christ Him- 
self, in whose Spirit, the Spirit which unites 
them one to another and to Him, they 
become together "one flock, one Shepherd/' 
Fellowships, made up of groups of men 
and women who are with Christ, redeemed 
by Him, learning from Him, following Him, 
helping in His work, looking out on life 
with something of His devotion to the will 
of God and His passion to seek and save 
the lost — such are the true Quaker Churches. 
It is worth while to analyze the conception 
a little. The Church, we say, is a living 
fellowship — not in the first place an organi- 
zation, but in the first place an organism — 
not an institution, but a body, built up of 
many cells, many individuals, just as the 
body has cells that grow and change and 
perform their several functions under the 
direction of an all-pervading, all-embracing 
life. That is what a living fellowship means. 
This life received through direct contact 
with the Divine life is the one essential 
of the Christian Church. It is the business 

23 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

of the Church to see that it is fostered in 
every possible way, so that the body may 
freely grow under its influence and freely 
express the life in all forms of worthy living. 

Historically, Quakerism is the product 
of this vital experience and while we 
gladly recognize that the experience is 
shared by us with many other branches 
of the Christian Church, it remains true 
that no other religious community so delib- 
erately and emphatically bases its individ- 
ual and corporate life upon this supreme 
fact of the soul's immediate contact with 
God. 

Our special position among the churches 
is sometimes stated — not by the Five Years' 
Meeting — in a series of desolating negatives. 
We do not practice water baptism, nor 
partake of the outward elements of the 
Lord's Supper, we are against war and 
oaths and priestcraft, our meetings are held 
on a basis of silence, and so on — all nega- 
tives. But we were gathered as a people 
out of the world through the force of 
dynamic positives. We withstand priest- 
craft because every disciple is ordained for 

24 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

service. As George Fox said, every man 
hath an office and is serviceable. We 
witness against oaths, because we uphold 
a single standard of truth speaking, and 
against distinctions of dress and address, 
because all men are equal in the sight of 
God; we oppose war because the armor of 
the children of light is the armor of 
righteousness, and disuse the outward form 
of baptism because the all-important thing 
is not the form but the inward repentance 
and cleansing by the blood of Christ. 
We cannot narrow down the experience of 
communion wdth our Lord to special cere- 
monials and places and ministrants, when 
we hold that Jesus offers Himself as the 
Bread of Life to His people day by day — 
in the home, in the factory, at business, 
in all our common work and in all our 
loftiest worship — the whole of life may be 
a sacrament of communion with Jesus 
Christ. 

It is as a " religion of life" that Quakerism 
will be presented in the future and is being 
presented now. 

Its distinguishing note will be its resolve 

25 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

to bring all this human life of ours under 
the transforming power of spiritual life. 
It will stand out against all divisions and 
compartments that separate the sacred 
from the secular, the sanctuary from the 
outward world of nature, the sacrament 
from the day's common work, the clergy 
from the laity. 

It will tell of a Christian experience that 
makes all life sacred and all days holy, 
all nature a sanctuary, all work a sacrament, 
and gives to every man and woman in the 
body fit place and service. Its concern 
will be to multiply men and women who will 
have a message of power because they are 
themselves living in the power of God, 
who will spread the light because they are 
themselves the children of light. It will 
claim the whole of a man's life, and the 
whole of life, individual, social, national, 
international, for the dominion of the will 
of God. 

III. 

So then the question comes: How can 
we foster this life? How can the Church 

26 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

continue, through a succession of genera- 
tions and amid manifold changes of cir- 
cumstance and thought, not merely its 
name and organization, its tradition of 
the fathers and its orthodoxy of language, 
but a living body of Christ, which shall 
embody Him, as He would make Himself 
known to each age? 

That is the supreme question. Unless 
the Church does that, it misrepresents its 
Lord and hinders the coming of His King- 
dom. 

Everything must be thought of in terms 
of vital relation if we are to see our way 
to an answer. We are dealing with life, 
and it is life, a unity of life, that connects 
the individual Christian with his Savior 
and with his fellow-Christians. 

I know vital relations are costly things; 
it is comparatively easy to preach and 
profess; it is not easy to give ourselves. 
But vital relations are abundantly fruitful, 
and that supreme giving of life which we 
associate with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ 
is, we know, the most fruitful vital relation 
that has ever been exhibited in history. 

27 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

"He, the Son of man, gave his life a ransom 
for many" — for the whole world. 

Dr. Hort has finely said : 

"In the times when Christianity owed 
nothing to custom and tradition, and when 
all the ways of ordinary society tended 
to draw men away from it, what drew them 
to it and held them to it, despite all perse- 
cution, was the power of its life. . . . 
Life calling to life was the one victorious 
power which mastered men and women of 
all conditions and all grades of culture."* 

We cannot commend the Kingdom of 
God to the world through institutions that 
are starched and stiff, but only by the living, 
warm, expansive touch of human hearts 
reaching out in fellowship to others. 

Men substitute tradition for the living 
experience of the love of God. They talk 
and think as though walking with God was 
attained by walking in the footsteps of 
men who walked with God. There has 
been a great deal of that in the Quaker 
Church. 

They substitute authority for leadership, 

*" The Way, The Truth, The Life," p. 183. 

28 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

the authority of the men of the past for the 
inspiration of men who have vision and 
first-hand experience of truth to-day. They 
substitute conventional methods — we have 
had a great deal of that, too — for the 
natural arrangements which a living fellow- 
ship of disciples would make and modify 
from time to time and place to place. 
They substitute a cold organization for a 
warm fellowship, an outward profession 
for an inward experience, priestly agency 
for personal responsibility, dogmatic teach- 
ing for education, almsgiving for personal 
social service, sectarian ends for the great 
purposes of the Kingdom of God. 

There is no end to the cheap substitutes 
offered for the use of the Church. Almost 
all of them are methods for running the 
Christian Society with the minimum of 
spiritual energy, seeing how little spiritual 
life you can manage with, whereas our aim 
ought to be to generate and use the maxi- 
mum in the illimitable service of the King- 
dom of God. 

A religion of life must devote itself to 
vital processes and vital relations. These 

29 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

are the things that concern our truest 
welfare. Take the chief: — loyal disciple- 
ship, inspired leadership, warm fellowship, 
loving service, steady spiritual growth; 
every one of them vital processes. Look 
at them in order just sufficiently to get them 
well in mind. 

Jesus Christ, so far as we know, wrote 
nothing, He organized no religious society, 
He formulated no creed, but what He did 
was to gather around Himself a band of 
disciples, men and women, who received 
His spirit, and in turn would bring others 
into touch with the life which had redeemed 
them. His life, springing up in the lives 
of men, was to be fundamentally that 
which should regenerate the world. 

The act of discipleship was following 
Jesus. It began with personal adherence 
to the Lord, and it continued through 
personal communion with Him. In art 
and in learning we know how stimulating 
the daily contact of teacher and disciple 
proves to be — the disciple's spirit kindled 
by the enkindled spirit of his teacher, the 
coming together of teacher and scholars 

30 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

into a common life and a common purpose. 
That is why the colleges of American 
Quakerism have been such great forces. 
Still greater, vastly greater, is the disciple- 
ship which is ours in the School of Christ. 
It calls for the fullest dedication, the closest 
following, the daily taking of the cross, 
but it gives us Him who is the Way, the 
Truth and the Life. 

Discipleship then is the first vital relation 
that must be always energizing the Church, 
but next in order comes inspired leadership. 

The great initial success of Quakerism 
was due, beyond all else, so far as human 
means went, to the traveling " Publishers 
of Truth/' as they called themselves, who 
carried their burning message far and wide; 
they were like rich life-blood circulating 
freely through the body. They were for 
the most part men and women of competent 
Bible knowledge and religious training, 
men with intense sincerity, with a great 
experience, who were talking about Christ 
because they knew Him. They went out 
on a devoted service, which no privations 
or persecutions could daunt, and many of 

31 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

them were young men in the prime of their 
ardor and strength, who would follow the 
movings of life rather than the counsels 
of prudence — and we want those in the 
Church. The Church must be prepared 
to take a few risks with its young men. 
After all, the hearts of the young are burning 
for a crusade. 

In the days of persecution which came 
upon the Quaker Church there was a great 
mortality among these leaders and unfor- 
tunately the supply of new leaders was 
small, indeed, ever since that glorious morn- 
ing of Quakerism, the equipment of the 
Quaker Church with inspired leaders has 
been a pressing problem. It is our business 
to raise up not priests but prophets, Chris- 
tian men and women of trained intelligence 
and wide outlook, who know God and have 
a sure insight into the great social and 
spiritual needs of humanity, whose lives 
have been redeemed, whose hearts have 
been touched with the live coal from off 
the altar. There is no place in vital religion 
for the vested interests of a clerical caste, 
nor the dead hand of tradition, nor the 

32 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

compulsion of conscience by the authority 
of the expert; but there is every need for a 
leadership, which continues the past in a 
living experience and educates and inspires 
and illuminates. A democracy requires 
leadership, not the leadership of authority, 
but what we may call, to use the constitu- 
tion of the Five Years Meeting, an advisory 
leadership, moving along channels of inspira- 
tion and personal influence. "For lack of 
vision the people perish/ ' 

The third great vital relation that the 
Church has to be fostering is warm fellow- 
ship. A few degrees of temperature may 
alter a climate and introduce wonderful 
possibilities of new life. Change the climate 
and you change the kinds of growth which 
may come into the world. It is very much 
the same with the Church. I remember 
a story of a little girl who was taken into a 
cold church one winter's day. She got in 
at one end and could scarcely hear what 
the preacher was talking about. After 
church she went home and her mother 
asked her: "Nellie, what was the text 
to-day?" She answered, "I couldn't hear 

33 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

it very well, but I think it was ' Many are 
cold but few frozen/ " 

I think congregations have sometimes 
preached that sermon. It is oftener 
preached by the congregation than by the 
minister. 

Quakerism at times has suffered from a 
frigidity of climate which' has repressed 
and repelled. In the first centuries Chris- 
tianity became a great power, because it 
was a great brotherhood. Surely we 
need to warm up our church organization 
so that it becomes quickened into a living 
fellowship. We want a Christianity with 
the brotherliness left in and the starch 
taken out. I remember seeing an advertise- 
ment, "Catlow's preserves, boiled in silver 
pans." What it meant was this: you got 
the sugar, you got the fruit, and you got 
nothing else. That is what we want in our 
Christianity. We want the sweetness and 
we want the fruitfulness. We don't want 
much else. We don't want frigidity, we 
don't want starch. 

Group life with a strong fellowship about 
it has always been a Quaker characteristic. 

34 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

In the early days it was groups of Seekers 
who embraced the message of Fox, and in 
England we still find Friends settled in 
groups over the country. I notice, in the 
expansion of Quakerism in the far West, 
that it is colonies of Friends you get. You 
cannot have a diffused Quakerism diffused 
over the whole State of Nebraska or Cali- 
fornia, but you can have a few groups of 
Friends at particular points. But group 
life means a great deal more than the 
collection of persons within the four walls 
of a particular building. It means a life 
in community and comradeship, because 
the members are joined together actually 
and vitally in a common Lord and a com- 
mon discipleship. It means, as with the 
limbs of the body, that the gifts and 
activities of each are freely used for the 
service of the whole. It means that each 
shares in and contributes to the larger 
life of the whole. 

Then there is the need for loving service. 
A Church is not an end in itself, not a club 
where we sit at ease in Zion; it is a means 
to an end. It ought to be, in the phrase 

35 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

of our early Friends, a "camp of the Lord." 
It needs to have the purposes of the King- 
dom of God ringing in its ears all the time. 
It needs to be vowed to the great redemp- 
tive work of seeking and saving the lost. 
It will be rightly judged by its output 
of service for the Kingdom of God. I 
fancy that the weakness of -modern Chris- 
tianity is very similar to the besetting 
weakness of civilization. We grasp our 
privileges and shirk our responsibilities. 
The healthy Church fixes each member with 
personal responsibility for using the life 
which he has received. It finds work for 
all to do. It knows that activity is the 
natural expression of life, and that the 
torpor of any part spells atrophy and death. 

Last of my list is what I have called 
steady, spiritual growth. The vital rela- 
tions which are the wealth of the Church 
not only bring about a unity of life with 
God and with one another, but produce 
that progressive development of personal- 
ity that we call growth. 

These are the questions we need to be 
asking ourselves all the time: Are our 

36 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

church members bigger men and women 
inwardly than a year ago? 

Are they stronger in faith, more radiant 
in hope, warmer in love? 

Have their spiritual senses developed? 
Do they see more of truth, hear more 
readily the Divine voice, respond more 
quickly to the guidance of the Spirit? 

Are their consciences alert, their loins 
girt, their hands eager for sacrifice and 
service? 

Here surely is what we may call the inten- 
sive work of the Church, the making of men 
and women not after the pattern of the 
world, but after the pattern of Jesus Christ, 
who shall go forth in His power and spirit 
to serve the Kingdom of God. 

Now, we might well enlarge on these five 
important vital processes — discipleship, 
leadership, fellowship, service and growth. 
But my purpose will have been served if I 
have said enough to bring home to you the 
fact that these are the things that matter, 
the things that are of vital importance in 
the Church. Methods and machinery, 
organization and Church discipline have a 

37 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

value of their own, but only a subordinate 
value to these prime factors of health. 
If these lesser things are accepted as a 
substitute for the vital factors, the Church 
becomes weak. If they are allowed to 
limit the development of the life, the 
Church may become dwarfed and deadened. 
Their true function, the true function of 
organization and discipline and these other 
matters, is surely large enough — namely, 
to provide means with which and through 
which the life can readily work. 

IV. 

In vital Quakerism then, the form has 
continually to be subordinated to the life. 
The life must be allowed free expression 
from time to time and place to place accord- 
ing to the varying needs and circumstances. 
In a word, the form must be kept plastic. 
This should be as much a fundamental 
of religious biology as it is of physiology. 

The physiologist tells us that living matter 
is always soft and jelly-like. It is matter 
in a jelly-like state, permitting of the 
free play of molecular interchanges, so that 

38 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

it is called a " dynamical state of matter." 
That is the general statement about living 
matter which the physiologist has to make 
to us to-day. It is essential that it should 
be plastic, able to grow, able to change its 
shape from time to time. It is always 
changing its form, as may be seen in the 
colorless cells of the blood. It has been 
said, and said truly, that no one of us is 
the same person we were seven years ago, 
every little bit of us has been changed in 
the interval. Living matter does not grow 
like the crystal, by the addition of new 
matter on its surfaces. It grows by ab- 
sorbing matter into its substance and 
transforming that into matter like itself. 

It should surely be the same in the life 
of institutions. The form should be flexible 
so that the life may be continually growing 
and changing its form according to the 
great directing control which the life exerts 
upon the body, and you want ease and 
flexibility in organizations just as you do 
in clothes. If you do not have this, you 
will have a good deal of chafing and cramp- 
ing. Sometimes, perhaps, a growing boy 

39 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

will burst his waistcoat. It is a great 
mistake to try to fit the man to the clothes 
when we ought to be fitting the clothes to 
the man, but it is a mistake that the Quaker 
Church has frequently made. 

In Church life, our own included, the 
letter that killeth has again and again 
encroached upon the quickening spirit. 
Outward government and external rules 
have limited spiritual guidance. The desire 
to preserve the deposit of faith has 
crystalized vital experience into for- 
mularies and creeds. Emphasis has been 
laid upon life according to some stereo- 
typed standard with a particular cut of 
collar and a particular mode of language 
and the life of the spirit has been quenched. 
But where the Spirit of God has been allowed 
freely to work upon the groups of disciples 
there has been a wonderful expansion of 
Christianity of a vital kind. This has been 
largely the case in the great foreign mis- 
sionary work of the Churches, and in our 
Adult School movement in England, and 
in the pioneer work of Quakerism in the 
Western states. 

40 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

If spiritual life is allowed to be the con- 
trolling, directing, molding force in Quaker- 
ism I have no fear for our future. We shall 
put in the forefront of our Church work 
the things that belong to life, the gathering 
of disciples, the raising of leaders and 
prophets, the maintenance of warm fellow- 
ship, the encouragement of service, the 
fostering of growth. This means that 
our Church arrangements will be so made 
and modified as to promote and secure the 
expression through them of the living 
forces which we have at our command. 
Those living forces are the spiritual force 
of the individual, which we call individual 
responsibility, the living force of the group, 
which we call fellowship, and above all, 
the Divine vitality, the incoming of the 
life of Jesus Christ, which we call spiritual 
power and spiritual guidance. Church 
arrangements, important in themselves, 
must be regarded as simply machinery 
through which forces can work, and the 
more efficiently the machinery allows the 
forces to work, the richer will be the service 
of the Church. 

41 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

Let us consider the way in which these 
great forces get to work. I will take the 
meetings of the Church as my illustration. 
I am not one who says that the only kind 
of Friends' meeting is a meeting for worship. 
I believe that there are three or four types 
of Friends' meetings, in all of which we 
may have personal responsibility and group 
fellowship and the spiritual power and 
guidance of Jesus Christ. 

Take first — it comes first — the evangel- 
istic service, the meeting which seeks to do 
the primary work of the Church, by bring- 
ing the gospel of Jesus Christ to man, 
the living gospel of a living Savior. For 
such a meeting you want a man who 
feels his personal responsibility, who feels 
that he is speaking as the ambassador of 
Jesus Christ, called, chosen, faithful, with 
a freshly given message of truth on his 
lips, but you want also behind him to back 
him the fellowship and sympathy of a 
group of earnest souls, who are helping the 
meeting by their prayer and sympathy, 
and who perhaps themselves will have some 
share in the delivery of the message or in 

42 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

the other outward service of the meeting. 
Moreover, the ingathering of disciples is 
a matter not only for evangelistic services, 
but for individual personal influence. 
Andrew findeth his own brother Simon: 
Philip findeth NathanaeL The men and 
women reached will need from the first to 
be surrounded with a new set of compan- 
ions and to be brought into a new fellowship. 
They will need, not simply one service 
on a Sunday stimulating them to follow 
Jesus Christ, but the helpful comradeship 
of a group bringing them into a knowl- 
edge of what it means to live according to 
the will of God. In the redemptive work 
which our Adult Schools in England have 
done in hundreds of cases amongst men and 
women who had lost their own respect and 
were down in the gutter, the most fruit- 
ful work has been done by bringing men and 
women a new set of companions, in whose 
fellowship they may learn what the love of 
Jesus Christ means. 

Take next the Friends' meeting with 
worship as its primary object. There 
you see clearly the three-fold play of these 

43 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

same forces of personal responsibility, group- 
fellowship and spiritual guidance. Worship 
in fellowship is an intensely active thing. 
Its basis is not an inert stillness, but a 
waiting upon God in the unity of the spirit. 
The meetings of the first Friends were 
radiant with the joy of Christ's indwelling 
life. There were times of living fellow- 
ship and communion, warm with the 
central fires of Divine love, so delightful 
that sometimes they could hardly break 
them up and would stay far into the night. 

The meeting for worship, more than any 
other agency, has given the world the 
Quaker type of character — the man or 
woman who meets life's problems simply 
and wisely, because he resolves them, 
not by passion or prejudice, nor mainly 
by the motions of human wisdom or policy, 
but by habitually consulting the Light of 
God which shines in the waiting soul. 

The revival in its power of the Quaker 
meeting is an urgent need in the crowded 
hurry of this twentieth century, when men 
live so much upon the surface and so little 
in the deep places of their lives. 

44 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

The world is too much with us, late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. 

In England, wherever you get earnest- 
hearted groups of persons together at a 
special gathering, as an Adult School week 
end, or a lecture school, or a conference, 
you find, whether they are Friends or not, 
that a Friends' meeting of a free, open kind, 
with prayer and praise and speech and 
silent worship all mingled under the guid- 
ance of the Spirit, comes as the great crown 
of all our fellowship and our intercourse, the 
benediction of all that has taken place, 
the perfectly natural means through which 
the common fellowship and purpose are 
lifted into communion with the life of God. 
We hardly sufficiently understand the great 
value in deepening character and consoli- 
dating fellowship of meetings of this kind, 
where there is a common purpose. 

The poverty of many Friends' meetings 
for worship has lain, I think, in the poverty 
of common purpose in the congregation. 
Where there is a common purpose, a sincere 
waiting upon the Lord in fellowship, their 
value is very great. 

45 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

It is the place for withdrawing awhile 
from the things of outward sense and 
exercising the faculties of spiritual sense; 
the place where to the awakened soul the 
vision of truth may be seen, the Word of 
the Lord may be heard, the guidings of 
His hand may be felt; the place where the 
heart may become aware of its wayward- 
ness and want and may gain strength to 
repent and come to Christ and choose the 
narrow road of life and dedicated service; 
the place where many have been able to 
say, with Isaac Penington, "I have met 
with my God, I have met with my Savior, 
and He hath not been present with me with- 
out His salvation, but I have felt the heal- 
ings drop upon my soul from under His 
wings." But it is also the place where the 
worship we render and the life we receive 
are parts of a fellowship of worship and of 
life which comes to the meeting as a whole 
and finds its natural expression through 
the lips of one and another as the Spirit 
touches them to utterance. 

There is a third type of meeting, which 
we may call a teaching meeting, sometimes 

46 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

a Bible class and sometimes a service in 
which teaching ministry is to the front. 
There, again, surely you get the same forces 
in operation. The most vital teaching 
meetings are those which best combine 
inspiration, personal influence and fellow- 
ship. In true educational work the char- 
acter and the faculties of a group of scholars 
are being trained by vital contact with 
one another and with the teacher. The 
contact of life with life is going on all the 
time. My friend, Rufus M. Jones, is quite 
right in saying that the central weakness 
of the Friends in the past lay in their failure 
to appreciate the importance of the fullest 
education of human personality in mind 
and soul, and the attention that is now 
being given to education in the Society of 
Friends is of the highest value. We can- 
not overestimate the promise to American 
Quakerism and to English Quakerism of 
our great educational institutions. 

V. 

I have now sought to show that Quaker- 
ism at its best is always the product of 

47 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

vital forces, and is always producing vital 
relations. I say "at its best"; that is 
the necessary qualification. 

This brings me to my last point. What 
is needed besides the life of the Spirit, the 
life of Jesus Christ in the Church? Surely 
what we need is an earnest dedication 
on the part of those who are seeking to 
know Jesus Christ. God is a spirit, and 
they that worship Him must worship in 
spirit and truth. 

In the early days of Quakerism men were 
athirst for the gospel of a living Christ. 
In the present day, side by side with much 
indifference and indolence there is a wide- 
spread craving for reality in religion and life. 

Tremendous social problems confront men 
to-day, new hopes of higher life are coming 
to the mass of workers, new convictions 
and new duties are dawning on the world, 
and fresh questions are being raised in the 
domains of history, psychology and philos- 
ophy. We are probably living in the midst 
of as great a period of transition as that 
which formed the bridge between the Middle 
Ages and Modern Europe, and those alone 

48 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

will find the fuller truth and lead men into 
it who will bear the travail and follow 
the trail of the Seekers of the Light. We 
want men who will get on the top of the 
situation, men in the spirit of George Fox. 
When he was overwhelmed by the confusion 
of the year of anarchy that preceded the 
Restoration of 1660, he lay in great exercise 
of spirit at Reading for ten weeks and he 
writes: 

"And so when I had travailed with the 
witness of God which they had quenched 
and gotten through with it and over all 
that hypocrisy . . . I came to have ease 
and the Light shined over all."* 

It is the duty of the Church to discoun- 
tenance all the manifold insincerities which 
disfigure our current Christianity, and to 
give free scope to honest-hearted love of 
truth. Sincerity is a plant that thrives 
under freedom and light, but withers under 
authority. The Church must use methods 
of illumination and education and fellow- 
ship as its means for cherishing true-hearted 
allegiance to the Lord. It will find these 

* Cambridge Journal, i, 343. 

49 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

methods more fruitful than methods of 
authority. Methods of authority may 
secure an artificial conformity, but it will 
always be at some expense of sincerity. 

Jesus resolutely turned His back on the 
quickly won Kingdom of God, to be made 
up of those who gave Him external obedi- 
ence; He set Himself to the slow achieve- 
ment of an inward Kingdom, which should 
gather men into willing discipleship. 

I desire an atmosphere of large-hearted 
charity and brotherly confidence, which 
will allow the Seeker after truth to live in 
the power of his experience, even if it is 
not a full experience, without being expected 
to live beyond his experience, an atmosphere 
which will allow him to make use of all 
the great aids which we have to-day in the 
search after truth — the great aids of scien- 
tific investigation, and what is still more 
important, in my opinion, the modern 
historical method which we are using to-day. 
We want to have as the motto of our Church 
the motto of one of our Yorkshire towns, 
" Weave truth with trust/ ' We want a 
Church that believes in the nobility of 

50 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

the truth; as this belief prevails amongst 
us, so shall we find a deeper reality in all 
our Church life, and a fresh release of energy 
and renewal of inspiration. For Quakerism 
is essentially a religion of sincerity } an- 
swered by the incoming of the living Christ. 

VI. 

What then shall groups of Friends, who 
have reached the vital experience of which 
I have been speaking, do with their expe- 
rience? Surely there are great demands 
confronting them to-day, great duties and 
convictions to be entered upon, great 
Messianic hopes stirring in the world. 
This world of change is also a world that is 
fertile in the promise of richer life. There 
is the passionate craving after truth. Surely 
we are to stand for reality in religion and 
life. There is the fresh sense that is coming 
to men of the meaning and the worth of 
personality. Men are learning what the 
early Friends reached as a fact of inner 
experience, that their hearts could be places 
where the Divine side of life could spring 
up, and that here in this world of our own 

51 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

personality, in personal responsibility, per- 
sonal dedication, personal service, is the 
very heart of religion. 

There is another Messianic hope: 
Woman's place in the universe in equal 
fellowship with man. Surely we can stand 
for that. We have expressed that in our 
Church life long before it came as a great 
hope to the mass of the people. 

Then there is the hope of the establish- 
ment of the reign of law instead of brute 
force in international affairs. We stand 
and have always stood for that. 

Again, there is the hope of the better 
ordering of society, removing the menace 
of destitution from the poor, securing 
an equality of opportunity for all, remedying 
the conditions that produce stunted lives, 
and giving those whom we call men the 
chance to become men in reality. The 
social regeneration of England and America 
has become to-day a living Messianic hope, 
making an insistent demand upon the 
Christian Church. Surely, with our wit- 
ness to the practical application of Chris- 
tianity to every part of life, we stand for 

52 



The Essentials of Quakerism 

that. Above all, and finally, there is the 
great hope of Christ and His Kingdom, not 
for a few only but for the whole world. 
With our living experience of Jesus Christ, 
we must stand for that. Are we not again 
called to form a vanguard of progress 
towards the Kingdom of God? Our re- 
sponse to the call depends upon our personal 
consecration to the task. Behind the King- 
dom of God as it is, behind the Kingdom 
of God as it is to be, there stand the actual 
groups of disciples, their personal experi- 
ence, their personal devotion. 

Joseph Sturge, the founder of the Adult 
School movement, once wrote: "It seems 
to be the will of Him who is infinite in wis- 
dom, that light upon great subjects should 
first arise and be gradually spread through 
the faithfulness of individuals in acting 
up to their own convictions.' ' This per- 
sonal witness for truth, based upon a living 
experience of it, is the great duty laid upon 
each member of the Quaker Church. It 
carries with it the necessity for self-sacri- 
fice. We know how the self-sacrifice of 
our Lord on the cross was the atonement of 

53 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

the world, and the self-sacrifice of men and 
women, in the spirit of Jesus Christ, has 
still redemptive force. 

We see before the Society of Friends, as 
it renews its spiritual communion and its 
warmth of fellowship, a great service for 
which it has been wonderfully prepared — 
a service for the revival of vital, prophetic 
religion and for its expression in righteous- 
ness of life — but the service will be fruitful 
through discipline and suffering; if it is 
to be redemptive of society it will cost 
much; those of us who have seen the vision 
of the future that may be will find our eyes 
filled with light and our hearts with peace, 
and our souls will know the springings-up 
of everlasting life and power, but at the 
same time our feet must be treading the 
way of the Cross with our Lord. 



54 



PART II 

A 

THE CONTRIBUTION OF FRIENDS 

TO THE LIFE AND WORK OF 

THE CHURCH 

BY HENRY T. HODGKIN, M.A., M.B. 

Secretary of the Friends Foreign Mission Association, 
of London, England 

Introductory Words 

After a general introduction I shall 
refer briefly to some ways in which Friends 
in the past have made a contribution to 
the Church's life and work. I shall then 
set forth under seven heads the distinctive 
mission which I believe the Society of 
Friends has to our own generation both in 
Western lands and in the awakening nations 
of the East. In closing we may pause to 
consider what is required in order that this 
message may be believed in its fullness and 
power. 

55 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 



During the time that I spent in China as 
a missionary, it was my privilege to be 
associated with the members of other 
Christian bodies who were working along- 
side of Friends in the Province of Szechwan. 
For a number of years there has been a 
large measure of co-operation in the mis- 
sionary work in that province, in some 
directions of a more thorough character 
than in any other part of the mission field. 
The province was mapped out thirteen years 
ago between the various missions, and by 
this means overlapping has been avoided 
and great harmony has prevailed. To such 
an extent has this been the case that, at 
the Conference of West China Missions 
held in Chengtu in 1908, the ideal of "One 
Protestant Christian Church for West 
China' ' was unanimously adopted by a 
gathering representing the missions of six 
different denominations, and two inter- 
denominational societies. It was also 
resolved "that whereas all Christian mis- 
sions laboring in West China have for their 

56 



The Contribution of Friends 

aim the establishment of the Kingdom of 
God, and whereas there is a sincere desire 
for more co-operation and a closer union 
of our Churches, this Conference recom- 
mends the free interchange of full members 
on a recommendation from the Pastor of 
the Church from which they come." This 
remarkable action on the part of the West 
China Missionary Conference compelled 
me to look into the problem suggested by 
the title of this address in an altogether 
new way. If we were really working for a 
single united Church, what was to be the 
contribution of our Society: had we in 
fact anything distinctive and vital to give, 
and in what way were we to give it? The 
still more remarkable gathering held at 
Edinburgh in 1910, and the contact which I 
have since had with members of other 
Christian bodies in following up the results 
of that Conference, have pressed the ques- 
tion home with renewed force. 

To many it may seem that the ideal 
of a single organically united Christian 
Church is a wild and impracticable dream. 
To some it will appear as an altogether 

57 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

undesirable object to set before ourselves. 
We are indeed perpetually reminded in a 
variety of ways of the inestimable gain which 
comes to the Kingdom of God through the 
wide differences of opinion and view-point 
represented by the existing sections of the 
Christian Church. If union spelt uni- 
formity, I confess that - 1 should be 
found amongst its strongest opponents. 
If, indeed, it stood for merging all differ- 
ences and an emphasis upon nothing beyond 
the minimum upon which we are all agreed, 
I could not look forward with any satisfac- 
tion to such a prospect. To me, however, 
union stands for something far other. My 
ideal of it is represented by the following 
sentence from the report presented to the 
Edinburgh Conference on this subject: 
"They desire that . . . those who are 
at present separated should seek to be led 
by the Spirit of God into a unity in which 
all that is true and vital in the principles 
and practices of each may be preserved 
and reconciled. . . . Unity when it 
comes must be something richer, grander, 
more comprehensive than anything which 

58 



The Contribution of Friends 

we can see at present. It is something into 
which and up to which we must grow, 
something of which and for which we must 
become worthy. We need to have sufficient 
faith in God to believe that He can bring 
us to something higher and more Christ- 
like than anything to which at present we 
see away."* 

It is not, however necessary for us to 
determine in our own minds what is the 
ideal towards which the Christian Church 
is moving, or ought to move, in regard to 
this particular problem. One thing is 
abundantly clear, and that is that, if our 
own generation is to receive and respond 
to the Christian message, every section of 
the Church must bring its best contribu- 
tion. No one section will, in itself, contain 
the whole of truth. In this day of Foreign 
Missions we are enabled to see on the 
horizon the glorious ideal of the Kingdom 
of God into which each nation and each 
race shall contribute its own distinctive 
elements of moral strength and spiritual 

*Report of World's Missionary Conference, vol. viii, pp. 
137, 138. 

59 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

illumination. Even so may we not conceive, 
as a preparation for this end, the delivery 
of a Christian message more comprehensive 
than any which has been delivered to the 
world since Apostolic days? If this message 
is to be delivered, either at home or abroad, 
there must be a larger sympathy and a 
better understanding between the various 
Christian communions. Each must seek 
to interpret its own message in terms 
intelligible to the others: each must make 
a patient endeavor to appreciate the 
strength and beauty of that which has 
been committed to other Christian com- 
munions with which it has perhaps hitherto 
been at war. Whether this will ultimately 
lead into an organic unity or not none of 
us can possibly say. Whether, indeed, we 
should work for organic unity or not will 
evoke large divergence of opinion. Whether 
or not we should cultivate the spirit of 
unity — the atmosphere in which the beauti- 
ful flower of unity will come to perfection — 
this is a question upon which there can 
surely be no divergence of view. 

I approach this question as one who 

60 



The Contribution of Friends 

dares to believe that Christianity is the 
future religion of mankind. I believe this 
because I see no other religious system in 
the least degree competent to take this 
place. I believe it because the closer 
linking of mankind by commercial and 
intellectual bonds appears to me as nothing 
less than a preparation for the linking 
together of the whole human race in one 
great spiritual kingdom. I believe it 
because I see in the Man Christ Jesus the 
One who alone can appeal to all ages and 
all races and all classes of men: who is 
in very truth the Son of Man. I believe 
it supremely because I see in Him the only 
begotten Son of God sent into the world 
for the redemption of mankind, and offering 
His life as the one supreme sacrifice for the 
sins of the whole world. It is with nothing 
short of a passionate longing that I desire 
that the Society of Friends may make its 
full contribution to the achievement of 
this glorious ideal. In the great purposes 
of God the full content of truth will, I feel 
assured, be some day discovered and fol- 
lowed by a redeemed humanity. For the 

61 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

Society of Friends, which has already played 
a great part in leading men into the truth, 
I am ambitious that we may not, through 
any failure of spiritual perception or moral 
earnestness, lose the opportunity of giving 
what has been given to us. That which we 
have, we hold in trust for the Church and 
for the world. 

On this occasion, it is not my purpose to 
enlarge upon the contribution of our Society 
to the world. In common with all the 
Christian Churches, we have a great message 
to deliver. Even as George Fox said in his 
day we are charged primarily with "the 
preaching of the Everlasting Gospel/ 7 The 
great essentials of this gospel — the Divine 
Sonship of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: 
His great sacrifice for sin: His victory over 
it in His resurrection: the gift of His Holy 
Spirit — these are the things which bind us 
together with all sections of the Christian 
Church, and which give us, in common 
with them, a life-giving message to our 
own generation. I wish it to be clear that, 
in passing over these fundamental ques- 
tions, it is not because I lightly esteem them; 

62 



The Contribution of Friends 

but simply because I feel so sure that we 
here are united with one another and with 
all who truly call upon the name of Christ, 
and because I wish rather to emphasize 
and plead for a more deliberate and sym- 
pathetic attempt to bring the message of 
Quakerism to our own generation. 

But I do this in no narrow sectarian 
spirit. It may be that the following 
recollection of a Quaker boyhood represents 
to some extent the attitude which many 
of us have held at one time in our lives. 
"I said 'thee' and 'thy' to everybody, 
and I would fully as soon have used profane 
words as have said 'you' or ' yours ' to any 
person. I thought only 'Friends' went to 
heaven, and so I supposed that the use of 
'thee' and 'thy' was one of the main things 
that determined whether one would be let 
in or not. Nobody ever told me anything 
like this and if I had asked anybody at 
home about it, I should have had my views 
corrected. But for a number of years this 
was my settled faith. I pitied the poor 
neighbors who would never be let in, and 
I wondered why everybody did not 'join 

63 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

the Meeting ' and learn to say 'thee' and 
'thy.' I had one little Gentile friend whom 
I could not bear to have 'lost/ and I went 
faithfully to work and taught him 'the 
language/ which he always used with me 
till he was ten or twelve years old, when the 
strain of the world got too heavy upon the 
little fellow! I am quite sure no Israelite, 
in the days of Israel's prosperity, ever had 
a more certain conviction that he belonged 
to a peculiar people whom the Lord had 
chosen as His own than I had. There 
was for me an absolute break between 
'us' and anybody else. This Pharisee- 
ism was never taught me nor encouraged 
directly by anybody; but I none the less 
had it. If I had anything in the world 
to glory over, it was that I was a Quaker."* 
I have no doubt that we shall all wish 
to banish from our minds any lingering 
suspicion of such a spirit as is represented 
by these words. To us it must be clear 
that no one sect is the sole repository of 
truth, and that others may have more to 

*"A Boy's Religion from Memory," by Rufus M. Jones, 
pp. 24, 25. 

64 



The Contribution of Friends 

give than we; but this attitude is not 
inconsistent with a clear sense of what is 
entrusted to us and an intense desire to 
share it with all. 

Again I want to make it clear, in referring 
to various elements of the Quaker contri- 
bution, that I am well aware that in respect 
of many of these questions there are many 
individuals belonging to other Christian 
denominations who hold the same views 
and exemplify in their lives the same moral 
qualities. I think, however, that I am right 
in saying that in each case Friends hold a 
distinctive position through the fact that 
they, as an organization, stand for these 
views of truth and, in some cases, exhibit 
them through that organization in a way 
which it is not possible for them to be 
exhibited in the lives of single individuals. 

II. 

When one looks back upon the past 250 
years and attempts to estimate the value 
of Friends to the Christian life of England 
and America, there are certain outstanding 
features which at once arrest attention. 

■ 65 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

Amongst the chief contributions which 
the Society has been successful in making 
hitherto to the Christian life of England and 
America are the following: 

L At a time when religion was in danger 
of becoming, to a large extent, formal, 
ceremonial and external, the early Friends 
succeeded in calling the attention of their 
own generation to the necessity for a vital, 
inward experience. They undoubtedly 
helped many besides those who actually 
joined with them into a clearer under- 
standing of the inwardness of the Christian 
gospel, and into a personal experience of 
the living and indwelling Christ. 

2. The Reformation and post-Reforma- 
tion period was marked by that intensity | 
of religious conviction which so often leads 
to intolerance and religious bigotry. Even| 
those who had suffered persecution them-, 
selves followed the very example one would 
have expected them to avoid as soon as 
the opportunity occurred. That our spirit-' 
ual forefathers had an immense influence 
upon that age, in bringing about a greater 
spirit of religious toleration, cannot be 

66 



The Contribution of Friends 

doubted by any who read carefully the 
religious history of that time. 

3. From the day that William Penn 
entered into treaty with the Red Indian 
Chiefs till the day when John Woolman 
made his protest against Negro Slavery, 
and on till John Greenleaf Whittier thrilled 
the nation with ;t her songs which called to 
love and brotherhood, Friends have con- 
sistently^ stood *forT an attitude of sym- 
pathetic understanding of other races. No- 
where perhaps has this been more publicly 
and more deservedly acknowledged than 
by the action of President Grant in handing 
over to Friends the management of certain 
reservations for Red Indians, a policy 
which he declared had proved "most satis- 
factory." 

4. Even at the time when Quakerism 
ceased to be a powerful evangelical force, 
and when Friends seem to have lost some- 
thing of their first love, the Society was 
producing men and women of outstanding 
Christian character, who were known to 
be no hypocrites; whose word was their 
bond; whose business integrity was proves 

67 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

bial and whose character for truthfulness 
and honesty was surely an outstanding 
contribution to the Christian life of the 
eighteenth century. This type of character 
has, I believe, been largely maintained 
till the present day. 

5. And lastly, scarcely any great philan- 
thropic movement has risen during the last 
200 years which has not had the support 
of Friends; and notable cases could be 
quoted to show the way in which Friends 
have taken the lead in such matters. Espe- 
cially at times when religious revival has 
taken on emotional forms, and when the 
emphasis has been thrown almost exclu- 
sively upon the subjective side, it has been 
of great benefit to the Church to have 
the association of practical philanthropy 
with the very Society which has always 
insisted on the necessity for an inward 
experience. 

I refer to these few historic examples 
in order to illustrate the way in which I 
am approaching the question, and to show 
how a particular Christian Society has, 
for upwards of 250 years, been steadily 

08 



The Contribution of Friends 

bringing its influence to bear upon the 
Christian life of two great nations. In 
looking back upon the past, we may truly 
thank God and take courage. Let there 
be no thought of arrogance in our minds; 
but rather of deep humility, as we proceed 
to look into the problems which confront 
us to-day, and consider in what direction 
our Society may contribute towards their 
solution. 

III. 

In whatever direction we look to-day, 
we see the danger of an invading material- 
ism. By this I do not mean any philosophic 
position. In fact, I do not believe that 
what might be called philosophic material- 
ism is gaining ground at the present time. 
It does seem to me, however, that a prac- 
tical agnosticism is making itself felt in 
very many quarters. The vague sense that 
God is responsible for the Universe, that 
at one time some great Cause operated to 
bring it all into being and that, in some 
way, we are all still depending upon the 
benevolent activity of that Cause, is not 

69 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

Christianity. The Christian Church is 
being invaded by this uncertainty with 
regard to God. There is a loosening, it 
seems to me, of that close grip upon the 
eternal verities which enables men perpetu- 
ally to draw upon the resources of God, 
to throw themselves in the abandonment of 
faith upon a living Savior -and to find that 
faith justified at every step of the way J 
Men do not like to set forth upon a path 
without knowing whither it leads. The 
prevailing scientific temper leads men to 
test everything many times, to trust nothing 
beyond the range of verifiable scientific 
facts. This breeds a spirit which only takes 
cognizance of the things which can be seen 
and felt and weighed and measured. Where 
is there room in this narrowed universe for 
the limitless activity of the God of Love? 
When we turn our eyes to the non- 
Christian world, the danger becomes more 
startlingly apparent. Here are the " child 
races" filled with that sense of the mystery 
and awe which the little child, even in our 
materialistic modern world, still has. The 
savage thinks of God as infinitely near, 

70 



The Contribution of Friends 

or at least he thinks tha£ the spirits of the 
departed are. It needs no carefully stated 
argument to demonstrate the existence of 
an unknown world. It lies all about and 
around. He is reminded of it by the thun- 
der and the lightning. And to him there 
comes our modern education explaining 
away all the beautiful or the dreadful 
mystery of life, and, before he knows what 
has happened, he is losing his sense of God. 
The old sanctions are loosened as the old 
fear is removed, and he has got helplessly 
adrift into the mid-stream of a barren 
rationalism. 

What are we to do for him and what are 
we to do for the modern man in our midst? 
We shall not have to go very far to search 
for those who still find the remedy in an 
elaborate and beautiful religious ceremonial; 
who will tell us that it is foolish to build our 
religious conviction upon mere personal 
experience: that we are rather to turn back 
to the experience of the Christian Church. 
We are to observe its ordinances perfectly. 
There are to be stated seasons of prayer: 
there are to be stated means of grace: 

71 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

ts't 

and through these, whether you feel any 
better for it or not, you will be brought 
into line with the experience of the Catholic 
Church and become partakers of Heavenly 
grace. I am far from denying that beautiful 
forms of worship, that stated seasons of 
prayer, or that time-honored ritual may 
have a real place in the spiritual experience 
of very many. Doubtless, these things 
have been of value in bringing numbers of 
souls into the Kingdom of God, and will 
still be so. To me it seems, however, 
that they are fraught with great danger. 
Especially at the present time, when men 
intensely desire reality, they are apt to 
become impatient with the forms of a 
bygone age, however zealously they may 
be followed by some of their contem- 
poraries. And, on the other hand, there are 
those who are too readily content with the 
outward and allow the mere forms of 
religion to salve the uneasy conscience. 
Was there, I wonder, ever a time when 
men needed more than they do to-day a 
clear summons into a life of spiritual reality 
and of personal intimate knowledge of God? 

72 



The Contribution of Friends^ 

Can we summon them back as did our 
forefathers? Have we the message that 
they had? Can we say, as did Francis 
Howgill, "The Lord appeared daily to us 
to our astonishment, amazement and great 
admiration, insomuch that we often said 
one to another with great joy of heart, 
'What! Is the Kingdom of God come to 
be with men?'" The message sent forth 
by the Edinburgh Conference to the whole 
Church of Christ called her to realize that 
"God is demanding of us all a new order 
of life. • . . that He is greater, more 
loving, nearer and more available for our 
help and comfort than any man has 
dreamed. " If there was one thing which 
the Society of Friends was called into 
existence to proclaim, it was this very truth. 
Are we proclaiming it to-day? And, for 
the non-Christian world, how great is the 
danger of substituting one set of ceremonies 
for another. To those who have been in the 
habit of trusting to such barren rites as the 
burning of paper money, the washing in 
the Ganges and the sacred but often most 
unholy feasts, how easy it is to allow the 

73 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

burning of incense or the rites of Baptism 
or the Holy Communion to take the same 
place in their thoughts and to be trusted 
for salvation or merit in the same way. 
In fact, one of our own missionaries in 
Ceylon was a man who had, for some 
years, worked in connection with another 
Society, and who had found that he was in 
constant difficulty because he was building 
up with one hand what he had to remove 
with the other. He came to the conclusion 
that, if he was to help men into a personal 
experience of Christ, he must take away 
entirely all possibility of trusting to out- 
ward rites, and preach to them the simple 
Quaker message. When the Friend mis- 
sionaries in China met after the West China 
Conference to consider the way in which 
we might express in a few words the 
contribution of Friends towards the doc- 
trine and practice of a Union Church, they 
drew up a brief statement which contains 
the following words under the heading of 
"sacraments." These words are intended 
to convey the essence of the Quaker posi- 
tion on this point. 

74 



The Contribution of Friends 

1. "The Pre-eminence of the Spiritual 
Experience. 

2. "The Spiritual Experience may be 
realized independently of any special occa- 
sion, rite, or mediating person, except our 
Lord. 

3. "Membership of the Church of Christ 
is of such a character that any outward 
recognition fails adequately to determine 
it." 

If the complete Christian message is 
to be given, if the Christian Church is to 
enter fully into an understanding of the 
mind of the Master, this aspect of truth 
needs to be emphasized, not only by words 
but by lives, and not only by the lives of 
individuals but by that added emphasis 
which comes through the existence of a 
corporate Body, whose very existence 
depends upon the validity of this tremen- 
dous fact. Our position as a Society does 
depend upon this truth, and out of it grow 
many other of our special contributions, 
if not all. We are set in the world of to-day 
to testify to a truth the enunciation of 
which has never been more urgently or 

75 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

more widely needed. The whole Church 
of Christ should be sounding forth this 
message. She needs, therefore, a body of 
persons who stand for the principle that God 
deals directly with every soul of man, ever 
challenging the spirit of man to rest in noth- 
ing short of direct personal intercourse with 
God. 

IV. 

No one can be blind to the way in which 
every detail of our life is being modified 
by the many new inventions which acceler- 
ate the rate of living. We crowd into a 
single day more than our forefathers could 
put into a week. The express train, the 
telegraph and the telephone, the type- 
writer, the multiplied devices for saving 
time — -all these things are speeding up 
life to the point at which the time for 
meditation and quiet is crowded out. This 
is surely a great and growing danger of 
which none of us is wholly unconscious. 

I have been surprised to find in how many 
different circles there is at the present 
time a feeling of dissatisfaction with the 

76 



The Contribution of Friends 

forms of worship which have for long been 
regarded as sufficiently satisfactory. I 
know a number of cases where, in high 
church circles, prominent people are feel- 
ing after something more akin to a Quaker 
Meeting than anything else. I am also 
intimately associated with some of the most 
living movements in my own country, 
in which meetings have been held on the 
same lines. This does not mean that 
great value does not still attach to regular 
arranged services. No doubt the vast 
majority of those who attend the services 
of the Anglican Church are still finding 
out that their spiritual needs are met 
thereby; but, there are others, and some 
of them are choice spirits, who feel the 
need of more liberty and who crave for 
more stillness in their worship. They are 
coming to recognize the great danger of 
the regular pre-arranged service such as is 
usual in most other denominations. They 
fear, perhaps, the invasion of the sanctuary 
by the spirit of rush and hurry. 

Turning to the mission field, I could 
quote many examples which show the way 

77 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

in which the Quaker form of worship 
appeals to some of those who are being 
brought out of heathenism. I think of 
one young man, a close personal friend of 
my own in China, who, having attended 
one or two Friends' Meetings, came to us 
and urged us, at a very early stage in our 
mission work in Chengtu, to establish a 
regular Friends' Meeting in addition to 
the ordinary mission services; and I recall 
with keen satisfaction the experiment which 
we made and the true worship into which 
Chinese and English together entered and 
the helpful and inspired ministry which 
arose out of it. A leading Indian Christian, 
describing the establishment of the National 
Missionary Society of India, explained to 
a Friend the way in which the Christians 
had met together for united worship, 
sitting as he said often as much as half an 
hour in silence and then breaking out, as 
prompted by the Spirit, into prayer and 
praise. "We," he said, "find this most 
helpful; it means a great deal to us, and 
we have meetings of this kind before every 
one of our business sessions; but," he con- 

78 



The Contribution of Friends 

tinued, "you won't be able to understand 
it; it is so different from your English 
ways." You can imagine his surprise on 
being told that he had almost exactly 
described the way in which the Friend to 
whom he was speaking habitually wor- 
shiped. Not long ago I took a friend of 
mine to Meeting. He was a man who had 
spent some years in India and had become 
intimately associated with a number of 
Indian students. After Meeting he asked 
me if our Meetings were open to the public; 
because, if so, he would like to bring some of 
his Indian friends to Meeting, as he felt 
it was exactly the thing which would help 
them. 

It seems to me that, in the forms of 
worship in other Churches, we have either 
on the one hand a united act of wor- 
ship which is to some extent formal, as 
when the congregation joins in the sing- 
ing of a hymn or in a set prayer; or 
else on the other hand we have an 
individual act which is not formal but 
inspired, as when a man filled with a mes- 
sage from God delivers it to the congrega- 

79 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

tion. I know no other form of worship 
which fulfils my idea of a united act inspired 
of God. As we wait together upon Him 
we are together called into His Holy pres- 
ence. The silence represents to us not 
merely the touch of each individual spirit 
with the Spirit of God; it represents rather 
the uniting of our spirits 'together in har- 
mony with His Spirit. Thus are we priv- 
ileged to understand something of that true 
Communion of the Saints which is to be 
fully experienced in the life beyond. A 
Friends' Meeting filled with the sense of 
the presence of God is, to my mind, one of 
the chief contributions which Friends ought 
to be making to the life of the Church of 
Christ. This ideal was well expressed by 
T. R. Glover in the Swarthmore Lecture. 

"When it is real worship, common wor- 
ship may take the individual soul a good 
deal further than it may go alone. We make 
the atmosphere for one another — courage, 
depression, hope, study, reflection or what- 
ever it may be; and faith is, as a matter 
of fact, as liable to be helped as hindered 
by environment. Prayer, when it is reality, 

80 



The Contribution of Friends 

and when it is the common activity in one 
place at one time of a community of like 
experience, may reach a higher plane than 
we have known before, not as a matter of 
mere emotion but with results that do not 
pass away. 

"Love is reinforced by this solidarity 
of the Christian communion, for in it 
Christ becomes more real, and things are 
apt to be seen here sub specie aeternitatis 
in their true proportions. Such vision of 
reality will over and over again be trans- 
lated into action and consecration. The 
common worship, if it is the act of all, and 
done in deep seriousness, passes out of the 
formal into the effective, with or without 
mystical rite or element, it becomes com- 
munion, and we understand in a new and 
quieter way what the early Church meant 
by its doctrine of the Holy Spirit. God's 
Spirit is not bound by our choosing, but it 
is possible for us to become more receptive. 
It is easy to see how men have come to the 
view that through the Church the gift of 
the Spirit is mediated."* 

* Swarthmore Lecture, 1912, pp. 68, 69. 

81 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

He has to add however, "It is, I think, 
right to say here that these paragraphs 
are an epitome of my observations and 
experience of the Student Christian Move- 
ment;" a statement which may well sug- 
gest to us in England that our Meetings 
have not been all they might have been in 
recent years. Although Fdo not consider 
the following statement as satisfactory as 
that previously quoted from the same 
source, I should like again to refer to the 
statement drawn up by the members of 
the Friends' Mission in West China. 

"1. United worship should provide 
opportunities for the Spirit of God to deal 
individually with each worshiper as well 
as for each worshiper to approach to God 
in the way best suited to his individuality. 

"2. Each individual has a ministry for 
the benefit of all, to be exercised in spirit, 
and the true worship of believers depends 
upon the faithfulness of each. 

"3. Worship should provide an oppor- 
tunity for this ministry to assume vocal 
form, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, 
who may thus use any worshiper." 

82 



The Contribution of Friends 

I recently received a letter from one of 
the most prominent religious leaders in this 
country in which he said: "This morning 
I attended the Old Friends' Meeting here 
in Philadelphia and was much refreshed in 
spirit. I believe we must have more of the 
spirit of the Friends if we are to save 
North American Christianity." 

If meetings such as these have a real and 
timely message to-day, it becomes us to 
see that we do not lower our ideal and 
that we strive to achieve it more nearly in 
every meeting we hold. For the Church 
needs a quiet place in which its members 
can together hear God's voice and find afresh 
the message and the power to believe it. It 
needs to learn how to wait upon God. 

V. 

One of the most notable features of the 
last century has been the progress of the 
democratic movement. Every one who 
has watched that movement must realize 
the great danger of the tyranny of majori- 
ties. It is true that this danger seems to 
most of us to-day a smaller one than the 

83 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

danger of the tyranny of a bureaucracy 
or of an autocrat. But, whichever way 
we look at it, it does not seem that we have 
found the true solution. Is it not possible 
that the pendulum has swung too far and 
that we have yet to discover the highest 
principle upon which a State may be 
governed? 

In the new democracies of the East there 
is perhaps a greater danger, owing to the 
rapidity with which the new ideas have 
spread and the lack of an understanding 
of the deeper principles out of which they 
spring. Those who have closely followed 
affairs in the Far East will realize with 
what anxious eyes Japan has been watching 
the democratic movement in China, and 
how she would have given almost anything 
to preserve at least the name of monarchy 
for China. In India and in other nations 
the desire for an independent government 
and the rule of the people is outrunning 
the growth in ability to fulfil such functions. 
The spread of democracy and the desire 
for national independence is making itself 
felt, not only in the State but also in the 

84 



The Contribution of Friends 

■i i .i i 

young Churches in the Far East. On the 
one hand we have those systems of Church 
Government which are classed together as 
Episcopal, and in which the authority is 
vested in a comparatively few. On the 
other hand we have Churches which pin 
their faith to the old adage "vox populi 
vox Dei." 

I question whether either has found the 
solution to the difficulty of the young 
Church. In both systems there lurk dan- 
gers which can here only be hinted at. 

It has often seemed to me that Friends 
do not realize how much they have in 
their Meetings for Discipline. I believe 
that we have here a most valuable contribu- 
tion towards the solution of the difficulty 
at which I have hinted. We have at least 
an ideal which we ought to be most careful 
not to surrender. Let me explain a little 
more fully what I mean. 

We meet together on the assumption that 
Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church and 
that we can trust Him to lead it. We 
enter upon the discussion of a difficult 
matter of business with the full knowledge 

85 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

that many different shades of opinion will 
be represented in that meeting. Never- 
theless, we discuss it with the confidence 
that the will of God will be made known 
to us as a Body of persons, and through the 
whole Body; not that is to say merely 
through the individual or set of individuals 
who act as a Cabinet, nor even through the 
majority of those present. We discuss the 
question together and we believe that, at 
the end of that discussion, we shall be led 
to a united judgment as to the wisdom of 
a certain course of action. That judgment 
may not be the opinion of any one individual 
in the room. It may be the opinion of the 
actual minority of those present; but, if 
we are in a true Friends' Meeting for 
Discipline, we come out of that room all of 
us satisfied that the Spirit of God has 
Himself determined our action and that 
He has, as it were, made Himself respon- 
sible for it. If we entered our Meetings 
for Discipline in this spirit, they would 
assuredly be a sacrament to every one of 
us. There is need for as much consecra- 
tion of heart in them as in the Meeting 

86 



The Contribution of Friends 

for Worship; and perhaps more, for it is 
not easy to give up one's own pet theories 
and prejudices. If this call to sacrifice 
is cheerfully accepted, our Meetings for 
Discipline should be of untold blessing to 
each of us; and thus there would be a chance 
for us to do our part in the solution of this 
most difficult problem. The end towards 
which we are working is the Kingdom of 
God — neither a democracy nor bureaucracy, 
but a theocracy. Here again I am encour- 
aged by noticing in some movements 
with which I have been connected in recent 
years, a tendency to follow in certain lines 
the methods which Friends have adopted in 
their Meetings for Discipline. I refer 
especially to certain Missionary Conferences 
and Committees with which I am connected, 
and to my experience in the Student 
Christian Movement of Great Britain and 
Ireland. And to apply this more particu- 
larly to the conditions in the mission field 
at the present time: in every mission we 
find this restless desire for autonomy. 
If we truly believe that the Spirit of Christ 
is present in the Church itself, surely there 

87 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

need be no fear in our standing aside as 
foreigners and leaving the Church to Him 
who has been the Founder of it and who is 
Himself responsible for its future. If, 
on the other hand, we leave only the ideal 
of government by certain Bishops specially 
chosen, or by a majority which can perhaps 
be maneuvred in the interests of a particular 
person or opinion, we shall indeed have 
grave cause to fear for the Church as it 
is left to itself. 

To those not accustomed to such pro- 
cedure this seems, no doubt, like a wild 
impossibility. To Friends it is a serious 
truth and the experience of this one Chris- 
tian body has demonstrated, amid much 
failure at times, its entire practicability 
as a method of transacting business. 
Whether or no this method be adopted by 
wider circles, it is nevertheless true that 
the Church needs a deeper conviction of the 
active presence of God "in the midst of 
her," not merely to inspire the individual 
but also to direct the counsels of the body as 
a whole. 



88 



The Contribution of Friends 



VI. 

Next to the danger of materialism or 
practical agnosticism in the Church of 
Christ comes perhaps the danger of oppor- 
tunism. I suppose to the end of time there 
will be difference of opinion on the question 
of compromise. That a certain element of 
compromise must come into human life, 
as it is now arranged, seems to me inevitable. 
Much as we chafe against it, we are bound 
to accept it, owing to the limitations of 
our existence here. To take one of many 
examples: I suppose there is no one of us 
who does not year by year contribute, 
through the payment of taxes either direct 
or indirect, to the maintenance of the Army 
and the Navy, and perhaps to other actions 
on the part of the State with which he 
equally disapproves. There is, however, a 
whole range of problems upon which opin- 
ions differ very greatly. The question 
to which I have made allusion — the ques- 
tion of Peace— illustrates my meaning per- 
haps as well as any. At what point are we 
going to make our Peace principles felt? 

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Message and Mission of Quakerism 

There are certain fundamental proposi- 
tions to which every member of the Church 
of Christ can be found to assent. That 
we should love our enemies: that we should 
do good to those that hate us: that we 
should show kindness to all men: and so 
forth. But at what point are you going 
to apply these principles?' We are living 
in a world where some kind of physical 
force seems to be absolutely necessary. 
I doubt if there are any of us who would 
go as far as Tolstoi in our rejection of it. 

But does this mean that we must there- 
fore accept war as a necessity of this present 
evil time, and therefore be prepared our- 
selves to take up arms, as many of our 
fellow-Christians think? The "practical 
commonsense man" sees no other course, 
even if his conscience do cry out at times. 

To take another of the great problems 
which press upon us in these days, viz: 
the relation of Christianity to business. 
"Business is business" too often means 
that Christian principles cannot be applied 
to it. There are so many things a man 
"must do" if he is to get along at all. 

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The Contribution of Friends 

"It is better to leave religion out altogether 
in some of these practical affairs/' In 
non-Christian countries we constantly see 
the divorce of ethics from religion; and 
I am afraid the evil is not confined to dis- 
tant lands. We all know something of 
the pulpit that dare not denounce the sins 
practiced by the wealthiest of the congre- 
gation: the minister whose tongue is tied 
upon sweating and overcrowding: the 
church-member who is zealous in the ob- 
servance of religion, but lacking in his busi- 
ness obligations. 

What a need for the thoroughgoing 
Christian who has ideals and maintains 
them in everyday life, who will not lower 
them to suit the exigencies of life, or the 
pressure of social custom, to whom expe- 
diency is a forbidden word even though 
its exclusion may mean the Cross! 

Or turn to the great non-Christian world 
with which we are daily brought into con- 
tact. Here is one of the greatest problems, 
if not the greatest, which confronts our 
civilization to-day. How are we going to 
meet our fellow-men of other races? The 

91 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

politician has his solution : the commercial 
man has his. What is to be the solution 
of the citizen of the Kingdom of God? 
There can only be one answer: we must 
go to these men as to those who are our 
brethren; we must see them not as wholly 
bad or depraved, but as those who have in 
them infinite potentialities, who are called 
into the same citizenship and the same son- 
ship which we enjoy. We must reaffirm 
to-day our belief in that Light which lighteth 
every man, but we dare not be content at 
that. As our forefathers led the way in 
the understanding of sympathy with other 
races; so we to whom these still more 
intricate problems present themselves, must 
stand for the ideal, however hard it seems — 
the ideal of spiritual kinship and the stren- 
uous effort to realize it in our relationship 
with other races; and so it comes about 
that the Foreign Missionary enterprise 
seems to be of the very essence of Quaker- 
ism, and that we find it closely akin to the 
great causes of Peace and Anti-slavery 
with which our Society has ever been 
identified. Is the Church of Christ playing 

92 



The Contribution of Friends 

the part which it ought to play in regard 
to these matters? Is it taking the stand 
which it ought to take in regard to the 
color problem in this country, in regard 
to the export of spirituous liquors, and so 
forth? What, indeed, is to be our view of a 
Christian Mission College which deliber- 
ately includes in its curriculum military 
drill with the full paraphernalia of warfare, 
and this in the traditionally peace-loving 
empire of China? To me it seems evident 
that there is a great place for the Society 
of Friends in this movement, just because 
we stand upon the side of idealism in all 
these complicated issues. 

Right along the line Quakerism ranks 
itself on this side. The Society of Friends, 
as I read its history, has stood for an 
idealism which is well in advance of the 
current practice. In the holding of our 
Meetings for Worship we have stood 
for the absolute ideal; many of our 
Christian brethren admit it in theory, but 
regard it as quite outside the sphere of 
practical religion. The same seems to be 
true as regards the Sacraments, Oaths, and 

93 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

so forth. The idealist is needed as much 
to-day as ever he was. The moral reforms, 
to the achievement of which Friends have 
contributed so much, have been attained 
by men who dared to be regarded as 
utterly impracticable, as mere dreamers 
and visionaries. When slavery, for ex- 
ample, was knit into the- very fabric of 
Society, when its abolition seemed certain 
to lead to an industrial cataclysm, Friends 
were not wanting who boldly said, "What- 
ever happens, we must liberate the slave ;" 
and in the end the visionary was right and 
the practical common-sense man was wrong; 
and the simple secret of it all was that the 
visionary saw God first and his fellow-men 
in the light of God's will for them. 

No less has it been true in business 
affairs that Friends have maintained the 
strictest standard of integrity in the face of 
opposition and probable loss. They recog- 
nized a higher obligation which must be 
obeyed whatever the consequence which 
faced them. And in the strength of that 
idealism they won their way to the respect 
and confidence of their fellows. In the end 

94 



The Contribution of Friends 

they were often found to be the more 
practical in spite of (or was it because of?) 
their unreasoning idealism. "It was in 
this focussing upon moral effort that the 
Quakers differed most from the other sects 
of the Commonwealth period. Their 
1 views' were not novel or original. Every- 
one of their peculiar views had already 
been proclaimed by some individual or by 
some religious party. What was new was 
the fixing of their ideas into one living truth, 
which was henceforth to be done, was to 
be put into life and made to march."* 

And to-day, if the Society is true to its 
past it will not lose the chance of standing 
on the same side for the ideal, the Chris- 
tian and the only final solution of these 
complex problems. The Church needs a 
body of men and women who will dare to be 
fools, unpractical, dreamers, in following 
the Light and who will act up to their ideals. 

VII. 

Another outstanding feature of to-day, 
to which the Society of Friends ought to 

* W. C. Braithwaite's "Beginnings of Quakerism," p. xliii. 

95 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

have a special relation, is that which is 
spoken of as the Women's Movement. 
This undoubtedly expresses much more 
than a political or social aspiration. It 
corresponds in some measure to the demo- 
cratic movement and indicates the stirring 
of spiritual aspirations. Its symptoms are 
seen not only in the movement for women's 
suffrage, and not only in Western countries. 
A recent book, published by the wife of 
one of the ruling chiefs of India, is symp- 
tomatic of great changes that are taking 
place all over the East. The book is a 
statement of the positions which are open 
to women in Western countries, and an 
urgent plea for the opening of these doors 
to the women of the East also. Although 
lacking in the realization of the difficulty 
of suddenly making so great a change in 
India, the book is well worthy of notice 
as indicating the stirrings of a new life 
among Indian women. Hardly any con- 
trast could be imagined greater than their 
condition in the past and that which is 
sketched out for them in the future by the 
authoress of this book. Probably many 

96 



The Contribution of Friends 

will have noticed that an incident in the 
deliberations of the Provisional National 
Convention of China at Nanking was the 
presentation of a petition from the women 
of that country for the granting of women's 
suffrage. 

I was recently made vividly aware of the 
vast difference between the practice of 
Friends and that of other Christian denom- 
inations by the consideration of a report 
on the relations between men and women in 
the mission field, which was presented 
to a representative Missionary Conference 
in Great Britain last summer. The report 
urged that an equal share in the manage- 
ment of mission affairs should be given to 
women, and brought forward a strong 
array of reasons in favor thereof. It was 
referred to by a member of # one of the 
largest missionary societies as "a momen- 
tous report." A lady Friend described it 
as " daring incursions into the obvious." 
The fact is that we as Friends possess the 
very thing which some other Churches are 
beginning to realize they need. A brilliant 
writer and prominent Free Church leader 

97 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

in Great Britain has recently asked the 
question why, in these days of the higher 
education of women, should the ministry 
be a monopoly of the men; and we Friends 
echo, with the thought of Elizabeth Fry 
and Hannah Chapman Backhouse and many 
another in our minds, "Why, indeed !" 
To the spiritual insight and courage of our 
forefathers we owe it, that in the Society 
of Friends we can say "There is neither 
male nor female/' I wonder if we suffi- 
ciently realize how great an heritage this 
is — how sacred a trust; and if we take 
sufficient pains to bring our message in 
this respect to the notice of others. If 
the women's movement, with all its great 
possibilities, is to be a contribution, as 
it ought to be, to the building up of the 
Kingdom of God, the Churches need to 
adopt a sympathetic attitude towards it, 
and to express in their own organizations 
their readiness to adapt themselves to meet 
its ideals. If they are to do this with 
confidence, what greater stimulus could 
they have than the knowledge, which few 
outside our borders possess, I fear, of the 

98 



The Contribution of Friends 

uniform experience of our Society through- 
out its history? The Church needs to 
realize with greater vividness how much the 
consecrated womanhood in her midst can 
contribute to her life, and to give women the 
fullest opportunity to make that contribution. 

VIII. 

If the women's movement expresses, 
as it undoubtedly does, a spiritual aspira- 
tion, I think the same may be said with 
perhaps equal force of the labor movements 
in Western countries. That many working- 
men have been practically unable to develop 
the higher side of their nature, on account 
of the conditions of labor, is generally 
admitted. The movement for higher wages 
and better conditions of work is, after all, 
something more than the expression of a 
grievance against capital. There is the 
deep yearning for a fuller life. This great 
aspiration the Churches should recognize 
and seek to meet. Speaking for my own 
country, I can say that one of the great 
obstacles with which the Churches are 
confronted in dealing with the working- 

99 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

men is the suspicion of the mercenary 
spirit. To the workingman, the clergyman 
is paid to do a certain job and must justify 
his existence. Of course this is a prejudice 
which is soon removed when the man gets 
into such personal relations with the min- 
ister as to feel the heartbeat of a true friend- 
ship, but often these personal relationships 
are hindered through the prejudice referred 
to. Do not these facts suggest that there 
is a need for one section of the Church 
which has not this disability and whose 
ministers are all laymen? 

And this brings me to the further thought 
of the need for this very testimony on the 
mission field to-day. The other day in 
India a missionary of another Society said 
to me, " Whatever you Friends do, do not 
give up your principles in regard to a free 
ministry/' and he proceeded to quote to 
me a case of some well-to-do young men 
whose mother was an earnest Christian 
woman. She, it appeared, had been urged 
to take up regular Christian work, and 
they had constantly stood in the way. 
When pressed as to the reason for such 

100 



The Contribution of Friends 

action, they informed the missionary that 
they could not allow their mother to take 
up Christian work because the neighbors 
would at once say that they could not afford 
to keep her; so intimately were the ideas 
of Christian work and the payment of a 
salary connected in the minds of the 
Indians. How often do we hear the gibe 
flung at Christian Missions that their 
converts are all "rice Christians!" The 
element of truth in the slander of course 
is this — that so many of the best are called 
to direct religious work for which they 
receive regular payment. At a conference 
of leading Christians held recently, a strong 
representation was made to the foreigners 
present, and through them to the home 
boards, to the effect that missionaries 
should lay greater emphasis on the calling 
of Christians into business life and cease 
to so state the problem of Christian service 
as to lead to the inevitable conclusion that 
the only place for the most consecrated 
Christians was the ministry. The great 
need, in fact, is that there should be a vast 
increase of voluntary workers; that the 

101 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

idea of " every Christian a missionary " 
should permeate the whole Church, both 
at home and abroad. We have seen 
recently that wonderful results can flow 
when this ideal dominates the Church, as 
in the history of the last ten years in 
Korea. 

Now Friends have a position of peculiar 
strength in this matter and one which in 
England has been nobly used, especially 
through the Adult School movement. 

I am not here to say that the practice 
of Friends needs no modification, in view 
of the special circumstances either of mis- 
sionary work abroad or of the conditions 
of a new country like this; but I do most 
emphatically believe that Friends have here 
a great testimony and one which is needed 
by the whole Christian Church. 

I am not maintaining that there is no 
place for the supported minister. You in 
America have found for him a larger place, 
in the special conditions of your life, than 
we have among Friends in England; but, 
even here, I am persuaded that you recog- 
nize to the full the primary thought that a 

102 



The Contribution of Friends 

man is not paid for his services or in pro- 
portion thereto, but that he is simply 
maintained in order that he may fulfil 
the ministry which has been entrusted 
to him. 

Is there not also great value in the insist- 
ence upon the fact that the ministry of 
the Church is not dependent upon the lay- 
ing on of hands, or any other outward 
ceremony? I should like to quote again 
from the West China document to which 
I have already referred, under the heading 
of "Ministry." 

"1. The supreme and only indispensable 
qualification for the Christian ministry is 
the Divine call, habitually responded to. 
Any man or woman so used of God is there- 
by constituted a Christian minister. 

"2. The part of the Church is to recog- 
nize such ministers." 

It is not only the mere fact of his salary 
which makes the workingman shun the 
parson. It is the thought of a class set 
apart, different from the ordinary man in 
the street. Are we making full use of the 
advantage we possess through having our 

103 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

business men engaged in the active ministry 
of the Church? If we have broken down 
the barrier between lay and cleric, have 
we not at the same time done something to 
remove the barrier between labor and the 
Church? 

The Church, then, needs to be reminded 
perpetually that the ministry is not the work 
of a class but of all, and that the service of 
Christ is not a profession but a free-will 
offering. 

IX. 

There is one other direction in which my 
own experience leads me to believe that 
Friends have a position of peculiar advan- 
tage and responsibility, and I cannot close 
this address without making some reference 
thereto. We are all well aware of the great 
difficulties which have been faced and are 
still being faced by the Church of Christ 
to-day through the advent of the historical 
criticism of the Bible. On the one hand 
there are those who believe that the Bible 
should be treated exactly as any other 
book; that the various documents which 

104 



The Contribution of Friends 

have been embodied in it should be critically 
examined and that every statement should 
be checked and challenged. This treat- 
ment of the Bible has led to results which 
many regard as serious, if not disastrous. 
So much is this the case that many of the 
most earnest followers of Christ believe 
on the other hand that the whole movement, 
generally spoken of as the "higher criti- 
cism/ ' is altogether evil and to be resisted 
with the whole strength of the Church. 
This school, with which are associated 
some of the most saintly and earnest 
Christian workers, believes that we should 
maintain the entire literal inspiration of 
the whole of Holy Scripture. From the 
results which they have seen in the case 
of many who have been grievously upset, 
and whose faith seems to have been ship- 
wrecked through following the higher critics, 
they have come to the conclusion that it is 
wrong to allow any question to be asked 
which might lead to the shaking of our 
faith in the literal accuracy of the whole 
book. To some it seems as though these 
two schools of thought could not possibly 

105 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

be reconciled. They regard their opponents 
as hopelessly narrow-minded and bigoted 
or as giving away the very essence of Chris- 
tian faith. But can the Christian Church 
afford to lose either section? It is true 
there may be irreconcilable extremists on 
both sides; but even this I should be sorry 
to admit. Of course, there are some who 
have entered upon the critical study of 
the Bible from a sceptical standpoint: 
I am not referring to these. But there are 
many who are truly devout scholars and 
who are intensely loyal to our Lord Jesus 
Christ; and there are many younger men 
and women who long to be able to maintain 
the faith delivered to their fathers, but who 
feel that, in doing so, they dare not be untrue 
to their own God-given reason, and who 
are therefore compelled to face the questions 
which some would counsel them to leave 
alone. The cure for such is not to tell 
them that an unorthodox view with regard 
to the authority of a certain book puts them 
outside the Kingdom of God: unfortunately 
there are not a few whose counsels to the 
young would seem to point in this direc- 

106 



The Contribution of Friends 

tion. Can we not find a via media which 
will help us to work together in love in 
spite of the fact that we differ so greatly 
even on so important a question? If we 
cannot so work together I believe there 
must be weakness in our testimony to Christ. 
I think that the Society of Friends is 
in a position of unique strength in regard 
to this difficult problem. The early Friends 
realized — as their contemporaries did not 
— that the Holy Scriptures contained the 
word of God; but that it was not right to 
speak of them as being the word of God. 
They realized the danger, to which the 
Reformers were many of them blind, of 
a literalism in the interpretation of Scrip- 
ture which would bind men as did the tra- 
dition of the Elders in the time of Christ. 
Nevertheless, they held with tremendous 
tenacity the view that the Scriptures were 
indeed inspired of God, and this none the 
less because the same Spirit who first 
inspired men of old to write was present 
and necessary to help the men of to-day in 
the interpretation of those writings This 
view is thus expressed by Samuel Fisher: 

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Message and Mission of Quakerism 

"And because we do not, with the misty 
ministers of the mere letter, own the bare 
text of Scripture entire in every tittle, but 
say it hath suffered much loss of more 
than vowels, single letters and single lines 
also, yea, even of whole epistles and prophe- 
cies of inspired men, the copies of which 
are not by the clergy canonized nor by 
the Bible sellers bound up, and especially 
because we own not the said alterable 
and much altered outward text, but the 
holy truth and inward light and spirit 
to be the Word of God, which is living 
[and] the true touchstone, therefore they 
cry out against us. Yet the Scriptures 
are owned by us in their due place and 
the letter is acknowledged by us full as 
much as it is by itself, to have been written 
by men moved of God's Spirit. "* 

This, it seems to me, is the platform upon 
which all reverent scholars and devout 
lovers of the Bible can meet. The Society 
of Friends, which has ever stood for toler- 
ance, is not the Body to hurl anathemas at 
those who are finding light for their path 

* Quoted in "Beginnings of Quakerism," p. 289. 

108 



The Contribution of Friends 

in ways that to some of us may seem dark 
and tortuous. Rather, is it not the Body 
which, in the true spirit of its founders, 
may bring us together with a tendering of 
spirit, as we own allegiance to one common 
Lord and as we recognize together the far 
greater dangers that confront the Church 
in the sin and unbelief of the world in which 
we live. 

The Church needs to recognize that even 
large divergence of view in reference to the 
Bible is consistent with loyalty to Christ, 
and that we must all stand together to face 
the great tasks that demand her undivided 
attention. 

X. 

In conclusion, let me say a few words 
upon the meaning of all this to ourselves. 
Much that I have said to you will be 
familiar, and perhaps even of the nature of 
platitudes to many of you; but it is worth 
saying if it does no more than bring us all 
to the same point for facing the tasks that 
are before us to-day. We come to this 
point recognizing that, whether at home 

109 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

or abroad, the Society of Friends is called 
to play a part, to make a contribution of 
permanent worth to the Church of Christ. 
I have touched upon some of the things 
that are included in the heritage of the past. 
In our Books of Discipline, in the memoirs 
of ancient Friends, in the lives of our own 
parents and grandparents we have abund- 
ant proof of our goodly spiritual inherit- 
ance; and the amazing fact that confronts 
us to-day is surely this — that, having so 
much, we are giving so little. The really 
pressing question is not, "What is our 
contribution?' } but, "How are we to make 
it?" What a glorious heritage the Jews 
possessed when our Lord was on earth, 
and yet how many of them were content 
to say "We have Abraham to our father!" 
We need, then, first a new conviction — a 
conviction that what God has given to 
us is not only beautiful, uplifting and 
inspiring, but that it is true. Whence 
can this conviction come? It can come to 
us only from God Himself. The records 
of the past, however luminous, will not 
enlighten us without His Spirit. We need 

110 



The Contribution of Friends 

to be brought into His presence, that we 
may see Him, as did our fathers, and have 
that note of conviction in all that we say 
and do that shall compel men to believe 
that what we say is true. 

And, secondly, we need a new consecra- 
tion. To us there may be revealed "the 
vision beautiful"; but only when we have 
said with the whole heart, "Here am I, 
send me," can we be trusted to bring that 
vision into the lives of others. If we are 
mere imitators of others, the ideal may 
seem beautiful, but it is not compelling 
enough for us to take up the cross and go 
all lengths in the service of the Master. 
When we draw our inspiration from Him 
direct, there comes into our lives that 
intensely personal motive which the Apostle 
described in the words "The love of Christ 
constraineth us." In this spirit of conse- 
cration to Him we shall be united with 
one another, and, being thus joined together, 
we shall be permitted to bring our message 
home to others as we could in no other way. 

And, thirdly, we need to have a larger 
sympathy with those to whom we go. 

Ill 



Message and Mission of Quakerism 

It is not the passion of bigotry which will 
enable us to deliver our message. Let us 
remind ourselves again that we are one 
with all who love the Lord in sincerity and 
truth. If we expect others to understand 
us, let us be at least as patient in seeking 
to understand them. Let us beware of 
the sectarian spirit. Let us emphasize 
the fundamentals which we hold in common 
with others even more than our own 
distinctive views. The more we have to 
give, the more vital does it become that 
we should "walk humbly with our God." 
The spiritual pride which writes off the 
achievements of our ancestors on the credit 
side of our own balance sheet is perhaps 
one of the chief hindrances to our paying 
the debt which we owe to the Church. 

And, fourthly, we need a corporate 
sense of our mission and message. If 
only each of us in this great representative 
gathering might be given afresh the child- 
like spirit, and if all together we might 
hear once more the call of the Master ring 
out clear and strong to our Society, might 
not even the early triumphs of Quakerism 

112 



The Contribution of Friends 

be surpassed? A new age needs indeed a 
new spirit. We are not called to give just 
the same thing as was given by our spiritual 
forefathers; but we are called each and all 
to give our best, without stint, without 
counting the cost, and, unless we do, we 
cannot be true to that which God has 
given us. 

Out of the dedicated spirit of the body 
as a whole there will be born a race of 
apostles. To each is given his ministry — 
"To some apostles." We must have such 
if our message is to ring forth with its 
ancient power and in new and living tones. 
It should be the peculiar task of the Society 
of Friends to raise up apostles. We need 
to travail in pain till they be born, and the 
pain is to be the long sorrow of a world's 
need which God has given us the ability 
to meet, and which for Christ's sake we will 
make our own. 

When I think of these great needs around 
me, I can sometimes feel that the illusion 
lifts and "the truth lies bare." In the 
Church and beyond its borders I seem 
to hear the yearning cry of those who aspire 

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Message and Mission of Quakerism 

and whose aspirations are checked and 
thwarted: the bitter murmurings of those 
who have lost their confidence in organized 
Christianity and have been soured and 
alienated where they should have found 
sympathy and help: the warring and dis- 
cordant notes of those who quarrel and 
misunderstand each other where they should 
unite firmly to represent Christ to the world: 
the perplexed questionings of those who 
seek to steer a straight course through the 
maze of modern life, and who have no cer- 
tain guide : the weary sigh of those for whom 
life is too rapid and who have no time to 
turn inward and find their peace in Christ: 
the almost stifled sob of the souls that are 
cramped by the pressure of a materialistic 
view of life, or by the crushing weight of 
a world that leaves out God. 

The call comes from far and near for 
sympathy, deliverance, direction, peace and 
courage. Through it all may we not catch 
the tones of One whose heart still beats 
with the heart of his weakest child, saying 

"My voice is crying in their cry, 
Help ye the dying lest ye die"? 

114 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

J. S. Rowntree: "Friends — Their Faith and 

Practice" 
T. E. Harvey: "Rise of the Quakers" 
Elizabeth B. Emmott: "Story of Quakerism" 
Rufus M. Jones: "A Dynamic Faith" 
"Social Law in the Spiritual World." 
"Quakerism a Religion of Life" (Swarthmore 
Lecture.) 
W. C. Braithwaite : "Spiritual Guidance in Quaker 
Experience" (Swarthmore Lecture.) 
"Beginnings of Quakerism" 
Allen C. Thomas: History of Friends in America. 



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